It’s now official: birther, climate-change-denier ideology will be translated into major US foreign policy if Trump pulls the United States, the biggest carbon polluter in history, out of the Paris climate accords today as is expected.
But the president’s actions were largely unnecessary because the accord is voluntary, asking, not requiring, nations to implement measures to reduce carbon emissions; but more wealthy countries are encouraged to assist poorer nations, a potential reason for the legendarily parsimonious president’s withdrawal.
A Collection of Deniers
Nevertheless, for years, people like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Stephen Miller, among others, have been on the political outside, leading the way on a variety of bizarre conspiracy theories that truly confound reason and common sense.
Some of the more astonishing ideas floated by this collection of intellectually vapid purveyors of crank include the biggest fish of them all: that President Barrack Obama was born in Kenya, and is, therefore, not eligible to be President of the United States. Trump led the way when he joined the movement in 2011, in part saying that “I have some real doubts” and claimed, but no proof exists, to have sent his own sleuths to Hawaii to uncover the elusive birth certificate of the president who he later admitted, rather tersely, was in fact an American citizen: “President Obama was born in the United States, period,” but Trump, never one to just let things go, did not leave it at that.
It was Hillary’s Fault
He went on to inform America—of yet another conspiracy—that, in fact, it was Hillary Clinton who actually started the birther movement, not he, explaining that “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I just finished it,” said Trump in 2016. But we all know that’s not exactly correct.
And then there is Steve Bannon, Breibart’s chief conspiratorialist and attacker of Jews, women, Muslims, and transsexuals, who once published a Breibart article entitled, “The Solution to Online Harassment is Simple: Women Should Log Off,” is one of the more famous founding members of the Alt right.
Cranks in the White House
But the astonishing new-day reality for America is these outsiders who once existed on the extremist fringes of a political discourse that was largely reviled, or at least dismissed, by most mainstream pundits and politicians alike now occupy the White House, a White House which is in a state of constant turmoil and scandal.
According to a New York Times article, the decision-making process inside the White House to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate accords has been one fraught with vacillations, infighting, and a general sense of disorder and chaos that seem to increasingly define the new normal at 1600 Pennsylvania ave.
Tenuous Justifications
Trump has, however, offered as justification for withdrawing the US from the climate accords almost every other country is a party to, excepting Syria and Nicaragua: that compliance would result in job loss and slowing the economy, despite the compelling chorus of objections by major US corporations like Apple that a pull-out not a withdrawal would would bring harm to the economy as well as to the environment.
Given that this president has attacked many vital American institutions, calling the press the “enemy of the people for instance,” has long been a climate denier himself, and has surrounded himself with people who are either outright birther-climate conspiratorialists or those who have been charged with crimes like domestic abuse or even a treasury secretary who violates banking law and Labor secretary who is a “habitual violator of labor law,” we can be sure that whatever the president announces this afternoon is not likely to improve life on this planet.
Who knows, maybe he’ll announce, to appear as a winner to his base, but never actually implement.